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- [Garrick] There are probably several times
during the course of a day
when you don't want to be interrupted
with a phone call, or a text message, or an email,
or by any other app on your iOS device
that might want your attention.
Now you could just turn your phone off, of course,
but then you might miss truly urgent or important calls.
You could put your phone in silent mode,
but it might still vibrate
if you don't manually go in and turn vibration off,
and you'll still receive notifications
unless you go in and turn notifications off.
So, let's instead take a look at a feature
called focus mode,
which allows you to be much more selective
about which notifications you do and don't want to see
based on what you're doing at the time.
So we'll start by going into settings
and here we'll find focus.
Now there are a couple
of default suggestions for focus options here,
but you can also create your own custom focuses
by tapping the plus button here
in the upper right-hand corner.
Essentially though, each focus option
lets you determine which apps can send notifications
and who in your contacts can contact you
when that focus is enabled.
So for example, I'll select work.
Now here at the top
you can first pick the people
who will be able to get through to you
when you have this focus enabled,
so you can tap people,
and then you may see some suggestions
of the people you communicate with the most
by phone or text or FaceTime.
If necessary, you can remove people here
that you don't want to be able to contact you,
or you can tap add people
and select people from your contact list
who will be able to get through to you
while in this focus mode.
Now at the top here,
the default is allow notifications from,
but you can also switch this to silence notifications from
if you instead want to mute people that you've added here.
Now here under phone calls,
you can choose who can get through to you with a phone call.
The default here is everybody,
which I kind of think defeats the purpose
of using focus mode,
so you probably want to choose one of the other options here.
For example, you could select favorites,
so anyone you've added to your favorites in the phone app
will get through.
You can also choose to allow specific groups
if you've created groups in your contacts app,
so you might want to create a group of people
who can always get in touch with you.
In this case, I'll just choose allowed people only,
so only the people that I've added to this focus here
will be able to get through to me.
Now with that enabled, we have this repeated calls area,
and this is really important to leave on in my opinion.
With this enabled, if you receive a second call
from the same number within three minutes of the first call,
your phone will ring,
so if there's an emergency or urgent event
and someone is trying to get ahold of you
by calling repeatedly,
they'll get through on the second call
as long as it's within three minutes,
and I prefer to leave that option on.
I'll tap work focus at the top
to go back to the main work focus screen.
The next area here is apps,
and those are the apps that are allowed
to send notifications while this focus is active.
Again, you may see some suggestions here
of the apps you use the most often.
You can of course tap the minus button
on them to remove any.
Now since this is the work focus that I'm working on,
I want to add any of the apps that I use for work.
For example, we have a suggestion here for Microsoft Teams,
I'll check that.
I probably want to use my calendar,
but everything else here isn't work related.
I'll tap done,
so these are the apps
I'll be able to receive notifications from
when I have the work focus enabled.
So be sure to take a moment to think
about what apps you use daily while working
and add them here.
You can also enable the switch to
allow time sensitive notifications,
so even if you don't list an app up here,
if it sends a notification
that's important right now,
you'll still get it.
This might be an alert from a ride sharing app
letting you know that your car is arriving,
or a notification
that someone is ringing your smart doorbell.
It's kind of hard to say which apps
will be considered time sensitive,
so I suggest leaving this on
unless you find that non-important notifications
are getting through.
All right, let's go back.
Now here we have options,
and from here you can choose
to show notifications on the lock screen,
so you can pick up your phone
and see notifications that were silenced.
You can also choose to dim the lock screen
when this focus is enabled,
which might be more useful for a focus like a bedtime focus
so your phone doesn't come up to full brightness
when you get notifications.
And you can also hide the numbers
that appear on the apps
that indicate how many messages you have,
which can be kind of distracting.
I'll leave all of those off for now.
Next, you can customize your lock in a home screen
when you have this focus mode enabled.
This can visually remind you that you have a focus enabled
or you can select a lock screen that you can customize
to display information related to this focus mode.
So for example, if I choose to create this new lock screen,
this one displays my calendar and my reminders,
so maybe when I'm in work mode,
I'll want to see that information.
So I'll tap add,
and maybe I'll just set that as a wallpaper pair.
Now next to that,
you can also create custom home screen pages
that are displayed in this focus.
So for example,
you could arrange all of your work apps onto a single screen
and move non-work apps like social media,
video players, and games to their own screens.
You might want to take some time arranging your home screens
into work apps, leisure apps,
and other screens for different focus modes.
So let's imagine that I did that,
these are the actual screens
that I have right now on my phone,
but maybe in work mode,
I only want to be able to see this screen,
so I'll select that and tap done.
Next, you have the ability to add a schedule
to automatically turn on this focus mode,
so you can schedule this focus mode
to start and end at specific times,
or choose a specific location for it to be enabled.
You can also select apps
so that opening up a specific app will enable the focus.
And we also have a smart activation option
that will have your device turn on this focus automatically
at certain times of the day,
based on your patterns like where you physically are
and which apps you're using,
so you can play around with those if you like.
And lastly here we have focus filters,
which allow you to filter the content shown in certain apps,
for example, mail.
So even though you can view and read mail
from all of your accounts in the mail app,
here you can select which ones you'll be able to see
when using the work focus.
So maybe all of my work emails come into my Gmail account
and my personal emails come into my iCloud account,
so while I'm in my work focus,
I only want to see my Gmail emails.
And you can add more focus filters if you want to,
so be sure to take some time to view these filters
and play around them.
But for now, my focus is ready.
Let's go back to the main focus screen.
From here I can set up my other focus modes
like personal and sleep.
I'll just leave those as is for now.
Now below that we have this share across devices switch,
which means turning focus on or off from your iPhone
will enable or disable it on your iPad or Mac,
or other devices where you're signed
into the same iCloud account.
So if I turn on work mode on my iPhone,
work mode will also be enabled on my Mac and my iPad.
Under that we have focus status,
and this is where you can enable or disable the option
that lets people know you have notifications silenced.
If I tap learn more,
here you can see an example
of what that message will look like to others.
So here you can see
that it says if someone tries to text you,
they'll see this message saying
that you have notifications silenced,
and they won't get any other info
other than you have notifications silenced,
it won't say what focus mode you're using or anything else.
All right, let's go back to the home screen.
And anytime I want to enable a focus mode,
I can pull down on control center,
and here we'll find the focus button.
Now, if you just want to enable do not disturb,
tap the moon icon and all notifications will be silenced.
I'll turn that back off.
To enable one of your focus modes,
tap where it says focus
and here you can choose which focus to enable.
I'll select work.
Notice I can already tell
that my home screen color and background is changed,
same goes for my lock screen.
And now that the work focus is enabled,
I'll only see notifications
from the people and apps I've specified.
And notice since I only enabled the first home screen,
when I swipe to the left,
I don't see my other home screens,
I only see the app library.
To turn off your focus,
just go back to control center
and tap the circle next to, work in this case,
to turn that off, so it's that easy.
And I should also mention that if you tap focus
and then tap the three dot button next to the focus,
you'll see some other options,
and these options depend on a few things.
First, we have the for one hour setting
which does exactly what it says,
select that and your focus will be enabled for an hour
and then automatically turn off,
letting you receive notifications again.
The second option here will either say until this evening
or until this morning,
or it might even say until this afternoon,
depending on what time of day it is.
But it basically just enables the focus for a few hours,
a little longer than the one hour limit.
We also have until I leave this location,
which may or may not show up
if you're not in a set location.
Another option which you might not see here
is until this event ends,
which will appear if you're in the middle of a timed event
that you have set in the calendar app.
But here you have some other ways to customize
when a focus turns off.
So that's how the focus feature works,
and again, you can create as many focus options as you like.
For example, you could create an exercise focus
to allow only fitness apps to send notifications,
or a movie's focus to only allow specific people
to contact you While you're watching a movie.
You'll probably be able
to come up with several other ideas for focus modes
to help keep you on the task at hand.
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